A MULTILINGUAL MUDDLE IN COURT

CHICAGO TRIBUNE

When a confession in a murder case gets thrown out of court, you know that something went wrong: Either the police and prosecutors did not do their job in documenting that they obtained the confession properly or the courts did not do their job right in evaluating the situation after the fact.

In the case of Suk Joong Kim, accused of murder in an arson-for-profit scheme that led to the death of three Chicago firefighters, it is hard to fault the judge who threw out the confession after several pretrial hearings. He was faced with conflicting testimony. Law enforcement officials said that the accused man had been informed of his right to a lawyer and had waived it. But another Korean man who acted as an interpreter contended that the accused did ask for a lawyer and was not provided the opportunity to talk to one.

The record was a mess. Some of the disputed conversations took place at least partly in Korean. The man who supposedly acted for a time as an interpreter had some trouble with the language on the witness stand. There was evidence that Mr. Kim`s wife was held incommunicado at the police station, evidence that four attorneys had tried to reach Mr. Kim but were rebuffed by law enforcement officials. A police officer at first testified that there had been no interpreter but then changed the story when the interpreter appeared in court. The judge may have become sufficiently frustrated by this multilingual muddle that he lost confidence in the police version.

The legal issue apparently now is settled. But the facts of this episode need further examination. The Police Department and state`s attorney`s office should review the matter thoroughly and determine whether their procedures are adequate, especially in investigations involving suspects for whom English is at best a second language. Language problems can create enormous confusion, as they certainly did in this case.

The point is not to find a fall guy but to take steps to minimize the chance that this kind of bobbling of an important case does not happen again.